[geeks] Looking for a Mobile Phone

[Nadine Miller]

On Aug 15, 2009, at 7:15 PM, Jonathan Patschke wrote:
>
> So, what's decent these days?  Also, what are your experiences with  
> the
> various carriers?  They all suck, but surely some are less suckful  
> than
> others, right?

Personally, I don't think you can go wrong with Nokia.  I'm a bit of a  
phone hopper, and while certain handsets of certain companies do well,  
the only phones I've seen that are consistently good across the board  
are Nokia.

My thoughts -- no comments on audio, since, IMO, the GSM network  
itself is more of a problem wrt audio than the phone.  "Decent speaker  
phone" means, "I can use it in the car when I don't have my headset  
and people can still hear me."

Motorola (we've had more of these than any other in the house, as  
hubby prefers flip phones, and Nokia, has until recently, only made  
candybars and similar) -- decent voice, crappy battery (except for the  
RAZR V3, though even that is not as good as Nokia or Ericsson, ime),  
decent reception.  Speaker phone's decent on the V3.  Iirc, V3 is one  
of the top-selling phones of all time, and is still being sold, albeit  
w/newer ROM and feature creep.

Samsung's older phones seem better than the new ones.  I've had  
dropped call problems in areas where my RAZR and Nokia 66xx worked  
fine.  Battery ok, newer phones have a stupid proprietary charge/ 
headset connection port that wears out fast.  I'd guess this is the #1  
failure point on Samsungs aside from battery death.  Speaker phone on  
the latest two Samsung's I've tried doesn't pass the car test.

HTC -- all WinMo -- call reception OK, battery life a little low.   
Slow, IMO.  Part of this is due to the ROM, part is due to the low  
performance of the HW platform.  No 2.5mm or 3.5mm headphone jack for  
media.  It's bluetooth or mini-usb headset if you want to listen to  
your tunes.  Which means you can't charge the phone while you're  
listening.  And, while it appears to be a "normal" mini-usb charge  
port, if you completely kill your battery (e.g. the phone won't boot  
from it) and you don't have the OEM wall charger, you are SOL for re- 
charging that baby.  How's that for lock-in?  Decent speaker phone.

Nokia, while not generally falling into the "pretty" category, seem to  
get the job done better.  Reception and battery life  of the phones  
I've used is great.  Symbian is mature enough to be nice and stable.   
I don't know how the different releases related to one another vis-a- 
vis development, but there are clear demarkations between the  
versions, which strikes me as a "good thing" for developers.  Nokia  
may have been the first to support blue tooth tethering, not 100% sure  
about that.  Bog simple charge port (a good thing, IMO)--standard  
across most Nokia phones, I think.  2.5mm or 3.5mm headset support, in  
all recent phones, afaik.  Lots of after-market support (important  
when you find a phone you like and want to keep it).  Decent speaker  
phone.

Back in '02, I had people show up at our flea market booth asking for  
replacement parts for Nokia 61xx series!  In '06, my roommate in VA  
was still using a Nokia mini-candybar (3120, maybe?).  These things  
are almost indestructible.

=Nadine=